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Bohumil Hrabal

Bohumil Hrabal Books

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All My Cats

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“The unbelievable that came true stayed with me, and I believed in the unbelievable, in the star that had followed me through life, and with its gleam constantly before my eyes I began to believe in it more and more, because it had made me a millionaire, and now that I had been brought to my knees I realized that my star was brighter than ever, that only now would I be able to see its true brightness, because my eyes had been weakened by everything I had lived through, weakened so that they could see more and know more.”

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Book:I Served the King of England
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“I have a habit, before leaving my flat in Prague, of checking three times to make sure I’ve shut off the gas stove, that I’ve turned off the lights in the bathroom and the water closet, and that I’ve locked the door, and then I go back once more to check on everything a fourth time, and so now, though I knew that nothing but my swan could possibly be lying there under the snow, I still brushed the snow away with trembling hands and saw the curve of her wing, and I went on brushing the snow away and yes, there was her neck, then I elbowed my way back like a sloth, and now nothing ached anymore but my heart, and so I crawled back from the riverbank to the swan again, and then again, trying to brush away more and more snow from that beautiful snowbound creature who, perhaps for my sake alone, had arranged herself in my sight so that I cried out into the dark morning and realized, bitterly, that the king of Czech comedians could go to claim his advance for this story, not to the Writers’ Publishing House, but to the very center, not of death, but of hell itself, where I will suffer pangs of guilt and remorse and shame that will pursue me into eternity, into the very heart of incalculable consequences.”

HeartbreakGuiltMadness And SanityLast LinesCzech Literature
Book:All My Cats
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“I was also dissolving time, since I knew I could never again participate in a ceremony more powerful than this one. And this is why, as I approached the line that separates consciousness and unconsciousness, I focused my entire being on that second, which still hadn't arrived but which certainly would arrive, when the past and future would be engulfed by a sheer and eternal present with which I would then merge.”

DeathDyingSuicide
Book:Moritati i legende
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“I moved through the world like a team of runaway horses in the hands of an obsessed and demented driver. But I was already somewhere else. I bowed down not just to the trees, [...] but I bowed down as well to those three tomcats, I bowed to myself in the mirror, and smiled because I no longer feared myself. I felt as though I were wearing a bridle and being led, no matter how or where, and it was a wonderful feeling, that everything was being prepared for me, as for a bridegroom or for bridesmaids, or for young men in a funeral procession. I no longer felt alone and it gave me, not strength, but a sweet sensation of happiness, though I knew sadness was lurking not far off, because all being arises from nonbeing, and everything that exists derives from its opposite.”

FateParadoxDiscordia Concors
Book:All My Cats
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“All I ever learned was that, having reached that limit, another horizon would open up, and that I had to keep on driving myself, escaping toward a horizon line that was forever receding, until today, here, as I walked beside the frozen river, the entire horizon turned back and came at me from all sides and its lines passed through me, creating a central point that did not impinge on me but rather came back to my hands and feet like a boomerang.”

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Book:All My Cats
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“Someone pumps sentences into my brain, long-forgotten images from childhood; meaningless objects and conversations peel layers from my heart. I am again a river faun, paralyzed by longing for a river nymph. I walk through wolframic space, my mouth and nose threaded with wire, and whenever I deviate from my course, I feel a sharp pain in my jaws.”

WritingLanguageBeautyMemoryMythology
Book:Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult
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“Life, strangely enough, is constantly being reinvented, and loved, even though a tinfoil brain will bring forth crumpled images, and a trampled torso will ooze misery. And yet, it is still a beautiful thing when a man abandons his three square meals a day and his adding machine and his family and goes off to follow a beautiful star. Life is still magnificent as long as one maintains the illusion that an entire world can be conjured from a tiny patch of earth.”

LifeBeautyRevolutionTransendentalismUnhabitual
Book:Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult
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“Beautiful blueberry nights fill my liver with morning and the nozzle of my heart spews forth an amalgam of blood. The sun rides the elevator up from the darkness, and the silken, waving wheat sways like a woman's raw cotton skirt. The wheels of the pit-head elevator turn backward, and columns of cherry-tree trunks girdled with white lime reveal the hidden location of military burial grounds. Watchmen guard the female convicts in their wire enclosure, and swallows deliver the message of violins in their beaks.”

BeautyHistoryParadoxTotal Realism
Author:Bohumil Hrabal
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“I was independent now and beginning to find the presence of other people irksome, and I felt that in the end I would have to speak only with myself, that my own best friend and companion would be that other self of mine, that teacher inside me with whom I was beginning to talk more and more. It may also have been because of everything I learned from the professor, who outdid himself in insults, because no coachman cursed his horses the way this professor of French literature and aesthetics cursed us.”

SolitudeReflectionThe Self
Book:I Served the King of England
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“and I look on my brain as a mass of hydraulically compacted thoughts, a bale of ideas, and my head as a smooth, shiny Aladdin’s lamp. How much more beautiful it must have been in the days when the only place a thought could make its mark was the human brain and anybody wanting to squelch ideas had to compact human heads, but even that wouldn’t have helped, because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.”

Bohumil HrabalToo Loud A Solitude
Book:Too Loud a Solitude
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“Snad to bylo i tím, co všechno jsem slyšel od pana profesora, který se překonával v nadávání, žádný kočí nedovedl tak nadávat ani koním, ani lidem tak, jako pan profesor francouzské literatury a estetiky..., a přitom nám vykládal o všem, co zajímalo i jej, vykládal každý večer, ještě jsem otvíral dveře, a on než usnul, než jsme usnuli, tak do poslední chvíle vykládal taky, co je estetika a co je etika a o filozofii a filozofech, vždycky o těch filozofech vykládal tak, Krista Pána nevyjímaje, že to je banda raubířů a syčáků a vrahounů a darebáků, že kdyby nebyli, bylo by lidstvu líp, ale lidstvo že je potomstvo zlé a blbé a zločinné, a tak snad ten profesor mě utvrdil v tom, že je třeba být sám, že večer jsou vidět hvězdy a v poledne jen hluboké studny...”

ProfesorFilozofieLidstvoFrancouzskéLiteratury
Book:I Served the King of England
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“[...] e io immaginai quale sorpresa sarebbe stata a Cana in Galilea, e molto più grande del miracolo del vino, se Gesù Cristo avesse portato in questo modo la sposa e Maria Maddalena in giro per la sala delle nozze, quale rafforzamento sarebbe stato per la fede cattolica, e in genere per tutte le persone che amano la religione, perché una forza così cara conquista non solo i cuoricini femminili, ma anche tutti i cuori degli uomini, soprattutto i cuori e le anime dei renaioli e dei marinai.”

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Author:Bohumil Hrabal
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“[…] la guardavo e mi si riempirono gli occhi di lacrime, non è che piangessi, avevo capito, avevo coscienza del fatto che dovevo farmi tatuare anch’io una barchetta così sul petto, che senza una barchetta come quella non potevo vivere, che quella barchetta doveva dare calore, che era l’emblema dell’anima, e che anch’io l’avrei avuta. Quella barchetta lì si può lavare?”

TattooTattoosScelta Di VitaHeartfully
Book:La cittadina dove il tempo si è fermato
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“It was the kind of horse they have in mines—he must have worked underground somewhere because his eyes were so beautiful, the kind I would se in stokers and people who worked in artificial light all day or in the light of safety lamps and emerged from the pit or the furnace room to look up at the beautiful sky because to such eyes all skies are beautiful.”

LightWorkBeautyDarknessLaborEyesHorsesSkies
Book:I Served the King of England
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“It was the kind of horse they have in mines—he must have worked underground somewhere because his eyes were so beautiful, the kind I would see in stokers and people who worked in artificial light all day or in the light of safety lamps and emerged from the pit or the furnace room to look up at the beautiful sky because to such eyes all skies are beautiful.”

LightBeautyDarknessLaborSightEyesHorsesThe Sky
Book:I Served the King of England
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